By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Few books have pierced the armour of apartheid secrecy as powerfully as Permanent Removal: Who Killed the Cradock Four? The acclaimed work by former High Court judge, human-rights lawyer and award-winning author Chris Nicholson.
More than a historical account, this book is a forensic dissection of state power, political murder and the machinery that sanctioned killing in the final years of apartheid.
Nicholson is uniquely placed to tell this story. Before his appointment to the High Court bench in 1995, he spent decades as a human rights and labour lawyer, representing victims of apartheid violence and repression. He was the founding director of the Durban office of the Legal Resources Centre, and directly represented the families of the Cradock Four through inquests and Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) processes. His proximity to the case is not academic, it is personal, professional and deeply informed by firsthand legal combat with the apartheid system.
First published to critical acclaim and nominated for the prestigious Alan Paton Prize, Permanent Removal investigates the 1985 murders of Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhlauli, community leaders whose deaths sent shockwaves through South Africa and, as Antjie Krog later wrote, ignited a turning point in the country’s political resistance.
The book goes far beyond asking who held the knife. Nicholson traces documentary evidence, court testimony, intelligence signals and amnesty statements to expose the inner workings of the apartheid State Security Council, a secret body chaired by senior cabinet ministers and the State President himself.
At the heart of the book lies a chilling phrase “permanently removed from society” and Nicholson challenges readers to decide whether this bureaucratic language masked authorised political assassinations at the highest level of government.
Drawing on previously hidden records and TRC evidence, Permanent Removal reconstructs how surveillance, planning, false flag tactics and death squads operated, and how truth emerged only when cracks formed within the apartheid security establishment itself. Nicholson places the reader in the role of an unwilling juror, weighing whether senior political leaders escaped accountability through compromise, silence or deliberate design.
Written with the authority of a judge and the narrative force of investigative journalism, the book is widely regarded as one of the clearest case studies of how apartheid’s security state functioned. It also poses urgent, unresolved questions for modern South Africa: Were some crimes never meant to be prosecuted? And what does reconciliation mean when authorisation remains unacknowledged?
Permanent Removal: Who Killed the Cradock Four? remains required reading for anyone seeking to understand how justice was delayed, diluted , and in some cases denied.
Summary of Permanent Removal by Chris Nicholson
I wrote a book entitled Permanent Removal: Who killed the Cradock Four? The book was well received and was nominated for the Alan Paton Prize for non-fiction. The revelations about the ‘death squads’ in 1989 by Almond Nofomela, as he awaited the death penalty, placed a cloud of suspicion on all previous deaths of political activists.
The families of the Cradock Four believed that skulking in the membership of these shadowy outfits must be the murderers of their relatives. Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sicelo Mhlauli and Sparrow Mkonto were activists in the Eastern Cape involved in protests and boycotts under the auspices of the United Democratic Front. The relatives of the Cradock Four instructed the Port Elizabeth office of the Legal Resources Centre, to represent them in trying to discover who killed them. I was director of the Durban office of the LRC and was often entranced by the details of the killings. I decided, in the absence of any willing volunteers, to write a book about their deaths.
We know that in the decade preceding the first democratic elections more than twenty thousand South Africans, mostly Blacks died, from violence associated with political conflict. Much of it can be placed at the door of the Nationalist politicians who fomented and used surrogate forces such as Inkatha and the Witdoeke to stymy and counter the ANC, UDF and other forces.
These machinations would be exposed during the TRC. Apart from these macro security measures which probably led to the vast majority of deaths, there were the individual killings of the Apartheid forces directed against political opponents. Doubtless these issues would have engaged the attention of all the top Nat politicians and they would have been anxious to thwart any ANC attempts at Nuremberg type trials. To illustrate the problem faced by FW de Klerk it is necessary to summarise the facts uncovered in my book.
The State Security Council (SS Council), a secret government body, chaired by President PW Botha and having senior cabinet members, including FW de Klerk, and other military and police officers met on 19 March 1984. They would evaluate reports from Joint Management Committees (JMCs) round the country and devise strategy to combat the unrest and strivings of Black activists to secure their political rights. On that day the SS Council decided that in Cradock there were two ex- teachers who were acting as agitators and should be removed.
The meaning of ‘removed’ seems to be clarified by what happened thereafter. On 21 March 1984 Lieutenant Jaap Van Jaarsveld who was employed by the SS Council, and later with the Intelligence unit of the Security Police in Pretoria received instructions from Craig Williamson and Brigadier Stadler, to travel to Cradock with ex-Koevoet and Security Branch member Sakkie Van Zyl.
They were to investigate how to kill Goniwe and his pals and they commenced by examining Goniwe’s house. On Van Jaarsveld’s return to Pretoria the next day he reported that Goniwe could not be killed at home. There would be too many people in the vicinity and that might compromise the operation. He suggested that he should be followed and killed along the way elsewhere. The opportunity did not present itself and the instruction was suspended.
During its meeting on the 19th of March 1985 the SS Council decided that ‘Agitator leaders must be selectively ‘skimmed off’ and removed from the community…’ At a later meeting on 29 April 1985 President Botha dealt with a document Total Strategy against the United Democratic Front, which included orders that ‘Certain covert actions had been initiated at JMC (KomKom) level to identify and neutralise upcoming UDF leaders at the earliest opportunity.’ A signal of 23 May from Eastern Province JMC stipulated that the security forces were of the view that Goniwe and Calata, who had been dismissed as teachers, should never again be appointed to the education department.
The Joint Security Staff met at 9 o’clock on 6 June 1985 under the chairmanship of Adriaan Vlok, the Deputy Minister of Law and Order. At this meeting it was decided that a committee under the guidance of the SS Council would decide Goniwe’s fate and make a presentation to the chairman on 12 June 1985.
Colonel Lourens Du Plessis was a senior staff officer in Eastern Province Command and testified that they had numerous visits from politicians from the State President, the Minister of Defence, of Law and Order and the deputies. They placed tremendous pressure on General Van der Westhuizen to sort things out. Du Plessis testified to the Zietsman Inquest that on 7 June 1985 Brigadier Van der Westhuizen called him into his office at about 2 o’clock. He told Du Plessis that shortly before Du Plessis’ arrival in his office he had a telephone conversation with General Van Rensburg, head of the strategy department of SS Council, who told him that he could help them to get rid of Goniwe.
As a result of what Du Plessis was told by Van der Westhuizen he composed a cable to the SS Council in Pretoria which read in part ‘Telephone conversation Gen Van Rensburg/ Brig Van der Westhuizen of 7 June 85 refers… It is proposed that Matthew Goniwe, Mbulelo Goniwe (brother or nephew of above), and Fort Calata, as a matter of urgency, be permanently removed from society…Wide reaction can be expected locally as well as nationally as a result of the importance of these persons, especially the first mentioned, for the enemy…’ It was clear to both of them that what was proposed was the killing of Goniwe. Du Plessis composed the signal in his own handwriting and sent it off.
Du Plessis testified that he linked the signal with their subsequent death because ‘it would be too much of a coincidence that such a request is made and then it happens and that there is no connection between the incidents. I link it also to the fact that Mr Goniwe was under perpetual observation at that time.’
The police officers who applied for amnesty for the killing of the Cradock Four included Eric Taylor, Gerhardus Lotz, Nicholas Van Rensburg, Harold Snyman, Johan ‘Sakkie’ Van Zyl, Eugene de Kock, Jaap van Jaarsveld and Hermanus Du Plessis. In the amnesty applications, General Nick Van Rensburg said that on an unknown date before 27 June 1985 Major Herman Du Plessis and Captain Van Zyl, who was directly under his command, approached him in his office. The possible elimination of the Cradock Four was discussed with him and as a result he agreed in principle, subject to the approval of Snyman. Snyman gave permission for the ‘four people…to be urgently neutralised in order to rob Cradora of its leadership and to frighten off any other remaining leaders from becoming involved politically to such an extent’.
General Nick Van Rensburg entered into discussions with Major Du Plessis and Captain Van Zyl in order to plan the operation. Van Rensburg proposed simulating a robbery or a vigilante attack, to play on the feud between AZAPO and the UDF, which had already led to considerable bloodshed.
Captain Sakkie Van Zyl summoned Lieutenant Eric Taylor and Sergeant Gerhard Lotz, who both worked in the Black section, to his office at Louis Le Grange Square. According to the phone tap log, Goniwe was attending a meeting at the house of Derrick Swartz and would leave later that night for Cradock. Arrangements were made for petrol and false number plates to be brought and Van Zyl contacted security branch officers Sergeant Faku and Sergeant Glen Mgoduka.
According to the amnesty applications, Van Zyl, Taylor and Lotz then drove in two vehicles in the direction of Olifantshoek Pass. They stopped at a suitable place to observe the traffic coming from Port Elizabeth. At about 11pm, they observed Matthew Goniwe’s vehicle driving in the direction of Cradock. They followed it to a deserted stretch of road, whereupon Taylor and Lotz overtook them and pulled them off the road. After the four men were identified they were told to get out of their vehicle and they were handcuffed.
Lotz affixed a set of false number plates to the vehicle Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhlauli were led away with Van Zyl while Matthew Goniwe and Fort Calata went with Taylor and Lotz. They drove back to the area of St George’s beach where they turned onto a gravel road through the bushes near the coast. Van Zyl drove away with Sparrow Mkonto with the intention of killing him with a knife. He also had a rubber truncheon with him with which he intended knocking him unconscious.
While Van Zyl was driving slowly through a deserted area, looking for a suitable place to kill him, Sparrow suddenly grabbed Van Zyl from behind. Van Zyl stopped the vehicle and shot him over his shoulder with an unlicensed .22 calibre weapon, which he brought out of Zimbabwe, which was lying under the seat. Van Zyl did not know where the shot struck him. He pulled him out of the vehicle and shot him again in the head and ascertained that he was dead. Faku stabbed Sparrow several times with a knife, even though he was already dead and then they poured petrol over the body and set it alight.
A similar fate awaited the other activists. The amnesty application for the killing of the Cradock Four came before Judge Ronnie Pillay who sat with a number of other truth commissioners. In order to obtain amnesty, applicants had to show that they had a political purpose and that they had told the whole truth. The security policemen said they carried out the killings because Minister Louis le Grange had given such an order. He had since died. Judge Pillay found Van Jaarsveld a credible witness and linked his report to apartheid superspy Craig Williamson in March 1984 with the subsequent death of the Cradock Four.
Eugene De Kock testified to the TRC and said that Brigadier Van der Westhuizen in Port Elizabeth didn’t feel that he had sufficient authority to order the death of Goniwe but had to make a proposal to the secretariat of the State Security Council. De Kock said it meant ‘I actually want them killed. What are you saying up there?’ He stated that the best people to weigh the political risk would be at Minister level because the army and police would have had the manpower to handle it that would be Minister Vlok and Minister Magnus Malan. Van Jaarsveld worked in the SS Council in 1980 and 81 and later in the late eighties. He said in his evidence to the TRC ‘If one observes the structures of the National Security Management Structure an operation such as this would be sent to the highest level of this structure, that would be the Cabinet and State Security Council level. It had to be cleared out there.’
De Kock said that President PW Botha would have probably given the order ‘I am going to speculate, but looking at the past there would perhaps have been a call to the Head of the State Security Council and he would have said ‘continue’. It would not be a very long conversation, perhaps three, four or five seconds.’
The manner of the killing is consistent with the advice given by Lieutenant van Jaarsveld who said that ‘Goniwe should not be taken from his home. There were too many people in the environment and that would give problems to the operation. My recommendation was that he be followed and then be taken on the side of the road or another place. My understanding is that the instructions were received from Brigadier Stadler.’
De Kock confirmed that Brigadier Stadler was the head of the South African Police Intelligence Wing and he was stationed at Pretoria headquarters and that Craig Williamson worked directly below General Stadler at Section G2. De Kock was of the view that Stadler and Williamson were in contact with the SS Council. ‘If there were orders for the elimination of persons it would have come from the State Security Council.’
The book is available via Chris Nicholson’s official website: https://chrisnicholson.co.za as well as from Exclusive Books and Amazon.